This invention relates generally to presenting content items via a social networking system, and more specifically to selecting users of the social networking system to be presented with content items.
A social networking system allows its users to connect to and communicate with other social networking system users. For example, a social networking system allows a user to maintain content items, such as images, audio, or videos, and present the content items to other social networking system users. A social networking system user may establish a connection to other users, prompting the social networking system to present content items received from other users to the user, encouraging interaction between the various users.
However, many conventional social networking systems merely present a content item received from a user to other users connected to the user. Rather than allow the user to limit content item sharing, the social networking system shares the content item with every other user connected to the user. This distribution of the content item to each user connected to the user providing the content item may discourage subsequent interactions between users because of the widespread distribution of content items among users.